Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

title: Berberian Sound Studio
directed by: Peter Strickland
written by: Peter Strickland
photography by: Nicholas D. Knowland
edited by: Chris Dickens
cast: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Susanna Cappellaro
imdb

Berberian Sound Studio (hereinafter BSS) is one of those risky movies that we are lucky to see from time to time. Something like Memento was back in 2000. Unfortunately, BSS doesn't find a great ending for its tour de force, as Memento did achieve.

And that, despite the captivating first hour, but surprisingly, then the plot becomes increasingly confusing and less interesting. One gets the impression that the writer and director, Peter Strickland, didn't know how to lead the story towards an ending at the same level as the plot deserved.

Despite that, BSS has some of the most mesmerizing images of the last years.

Berberian Sound Studio tells the story of a british sound technician that is hired to work in an italian production about horses. But he soons discovers that the movie, "Il vortice equestre" is a gore flick about witchcraft and inquisition.

Besides, his british character will clash recurrently with the italian way of working and beheaving of the rest of the crew.

The photography is great, imitating seventies movies. An special comment has to be made about the sountrack, specially the sound effects used both in the fictional movie "Il vortice equestre" as in the "real" story.

The above commented technical aspects (photography and sound), as well as the artistic direction the work of the cast and the direction, make the screenplay's defects specially painful, as we imagine what could have been BSS.

Despite this, Berberian Sound Studio is a highly advisable movie for all those who love risky, creative movies, that walk new narrative territories, far from the mediocrity that floods nowadays cinema.